When comparing Samsung MU9000 55" (UN55MU9000) vs Samsung MU8000 55" (UN55MU8000), the Slant community recommends Samsung MU8000 55" (UN55MU8000) for most people. In the question“What are the best TVs?”Samsung MU8000 55" (UN55MU8000) is ranked 13th while Samsung MU9000 55" (UN55MU9000) is ranked 46th. The most important reason people chose Samsung MU8000 55" (UN55MU8000) is:

The Samsung MU8000 is a good option for sports fans because of the TV’s decent color uniformity, well-controlled motion blur, and adequate picture quality.
Good color uniformity is essential for a sports TV since it allows it to reproduce beautiful and even looking sports pitches and arenas. In this aspect, the MU8000 performs as well as its more expensive competitors, like the Sony X850E and Sony X900E.
Also, a good sports TV must have a responsive panel that can eliminate the motion blur effect. Fortunately, the Samsung MU8000’s panel has a full pixel response time of 13.8 ms, which means that each pixel of this TV can fully change its color in about a 70th of a second, preventing fast-moving objects from leaving trails.

Pros

Pro

Great picture quality

The MU9000 can produce really detailed pictures, especially in dark scenes thanks to its really deep black levels. It has a contrast ratio of about 6000:1, which enables it to produce blacks that are 6000 times darker than the brightest white.

The colors are lifelike and accurate even without any calibration by the user. They will look really vibrant even in bright scenes because of the panel’s high peak brightness levels of ~400 nits for SDR & ~450 nits for HDR.

Even in a decently-lit environment, the MU9000's picture quality can still hold up - the panel is excellent at handling reflections thanks to its glossy finish, and it can get bright enough to fight off glare.

Pro

Capable of smooth 24p content playback

The MU9000 is great at dealing with 24p content, such as Blu-rays or media sourced from an cable or satellite box. It can detect and eliminate the judder effect present in these content, where images displayed can appear jittery.

Pro

Great at upscaling low-res content

The MU9000 can upscale 480p, 720p, and 1080p content to 4K quite well. The upscaled content has almost no noticeable artifacts, and all the details are preserved.

Pro

Remote has a voice command feature

The MU9000's remote has a voice command feature that can perform actions as you physically would with the remote, and it can even be used to adjust settings directly.

Pro

Intuitive user interface

The MU9000 runs on the Tizen smart platform, known for its simplicity and intuitiveness.

It’s easy to navigate and access all the functions of features of the TV. The Tizen OS menus are organized around the “Smart Hub” which contains everything: apps, settings, input switching and others. It also has a section for quick access to frequently used items.

Pro

Inputs are very accessible

The MU9000 comes with a OneConnect box which moves all the hard-to-access rear inputs away from the TV. Thanks to this, you’ll always have full access to all inputs and outputs of the TV even if it’s wall-mounted. The OneConnect box can also be used as a USB charging hub.

Pro

Suitable for gaming and watching sports

The MU9000 is pretty versatile. On top of its great picture quality, it has features that makes it perform quite well for gaming and sports.

It offers a responsive and fluid gaming experience . Players will have no issues keeping their actions in sync with what’s on the display, and fast-moving objects won’t leave any trails on the screen. That is thanks to the low input lag of ~25ms and the panel’s quick response time of ~15ms, which virtually eliminates motion blur.

It’s also great for watching sports because of the almost non-existent motion blur that makes fast-moving objects look smooth. The panel is also pretty uniform meaning it has no issues with displaying large, same-color objects on screen, like football fields.

Pro

Excellent at handling glare

The MU9000's panel has a glossy finish that reduce reflections significantly. This makes it excellent at fighting glare, along with its adequate brightness levels of ~400 nits for SDR & ~450 nits for HDR.

Pro

Good for HDR content

On top of its great picture quality, the MU9000 has a high HDR peak brightness level and wide color gamut that makes it good for HDR.

Shadows look pretty good with nice details, and highlights are quite vibrant thanks to the peak brightness level of ~450 nits.

The panel can reproduce the wide range of colors required for true HDR playback because of its wide color gamut, which covers ~60% of the standard colors required for HDR according to the Rec. 2020 color space. This is considered decent enough for reproducing HDR details, and it can display these colors accurately at different brightness levels.

It’s worth noting that while the MU9000 has local dimming that’s supposed to make HDR better, the local dimming is worthless and doesn’t do much. It increases the contrast ratio by a meager amount and does nothing else.

Pro

Suitable for watching sports

The Samsung MU8000 is a good option for sports fans because of the TV’s decent color uniformity, well-controlled motion blur, and adequate picture quality.

Good color uniformity is essential for a sports TV since it allows it to reproduce beautiful and even looking sports pitches and arenas. In this aspect, the MU8000 performs as well as its more expensive competitors, like the Sony X850E and Sony X900E.

Also, a good sports TV must have a responsive panel that can eliminate the motion blur effect. Fortunately, the Samsung MU8000’s panel has a full pixel response time of 13.8 ms, which means that each pixel of this TV can fully change its color in about a 70th of a second, preventing fast-moving objects from leaving trails.

Pro

Suitable for gaming

The Samsung MU8000 is the best gaming TV in its range because of its low input lag and excellent motion-blur handling. The TV’s input lag of 24.2 ms makes it suitable for fast-paced gaming.

Pro

Good picture quality

The Samsung MU8000’s picture quality is on par with its direct competitors. The TV produces a clear and good-looking picture in both dark and bright environments.

The MU8000 does an excellent job of displaying rich dark scenes because of the TV’s fair uniformity of its blacks and high contrast ratio.

High SDR luminosity allows the Samsung MU8000 to deal with the glare even in relatively bright rooms. The peak brightness of this TV is 380 nits, which is a good result considering that the competitors are only a tiny bit more luminous.

Pro

Accessible inputs

The Samsung MU8000 comes with a mini One Connect box which is used to move all the TV’s inputs away from the rear of the TV so that you can easily access all of the essential inputs even if the TV is mounted on a wall. The One Connect box can also be used as a USB charging hub.

Pro

Intuitive smart platform

The Samsung MU8000 runs the Tizen smart platform which is well known for its simplicity and intuitiveness. The whole menu of the Tizen OS is organized around the Smart Hub which acts as a gate for accessing all the functionality of the TV. Additionally, the Smart Hub has a row which contains the most-used items.

Pro

Good for 24p content

The Samsung MU8000 can detect and eliminate the judder effect from 24p content even when the content is sourced from a 60 Hz device, like a cable or satellite box, or Apple TV.

Pro

Excellent color accuracy

Out of the box, the color accuracy of the Samsung MU8000 is very high. It’s unlikely that you’ll need to spend substantial time calibrating this TV.

Pro

Compatible with current-gen consoles

This 4K120 TV is an excellent companion to any current generation gaming console, such as the Xbox One X, PS4 Pro, and Wii U. Additionally, the HDR gaming support of the MU8000 will allow you to experience the immersive HDR effects in the latest console games.

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Cons

Con

Not a good value for money

The MU9000 is a great TV, but the retail price can be off-putting for some because the picture quality and features it offers are present in other similarly-priced models, e.g. the Sony X900E. This TV can be really worth it when on sale, or if Samsung offers better after-sales service in your region.

Con

Interface has ads

There are ads that can't be removed on the MU9000's interface.

Con

Lacks support for Dolby Vision

The MU9000 currently only supports the HDR10 format for HDR content.

Con

Mediocre sound quality

The sound quality of MU9000's built-in speakers is mediocre. It sounds quite bassy and the clarity is reduced at higher volumes - you might have a hard time following dialogues at higher volumes because of this. There’s also distortion at higher volumes.

Con

Not suitable for group watching

The MU9000 has a narrow viewing angle that makes it unsuitable for watching with groups.

Audience sitting away from the center of the screen will not experience the same picture as those sitting in the center, because the picture quality starts to deteriorate significantly when viewing from just ≥20° away from the screen's center - the colors will start looking dull and blacks will look like greys.

Con

Contains ads

The main interface of the Samsung MU8000 does contain ads and sponsored content.

Con

Poor viewing angle

Just like many other VA TVs, the Samsung MU8000 does suffer from the substantial picture degradation due to viewing angle. The colors of this TV start to degrade once the viewing angle is greater than 19 degrees which makes this unsuitable for watching with a large group.

Con

Suffers from reflections

The Samsung MU8000 reflects a lot of light, which makes this TV unsuitable for overly bright rooms with lots of windows.

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